END OF THE WAR

Dayton brought peace, but it did not bring forgetfulness. A signature on paper silenced the weapons, but it could not erase the ashes from Pionirska Street, the blood from Kapija, or the tears from Potočari.

Bosnia and Herzegovina continued to exist, but with a heart divided into two entities, like a bird with broken wings still trying to fly.

When the war ended, reality became just as heavy as the years that came before it.

The weapons were quiet, but fear did not disappear. Loss did not disappear. Uncertainty did not disappear. They remained inside us, living quietly, shaping every step we took.

Returning to normal life was slow and painful. Every day became a struggle for dignity, for safety, for meaning. Peace did not arrive with celebration or music. It arrived on paper, with a signature, and left the rest to us.

Dayton stopped the war, but it did not bring peace into people’s hearts.

In every town and on every street, there was heaviness in the air, as if the land itself remembered what people were trying to forget. No one knew how to live normally again.

Everyone was wounded in their own way.

Some by war.

Some by loss.

Some by a fear that crept into the body and never left.

My family tried to return to life, but the reality after the war was often harsher than the war itself. During the war, you knew who the enemy was. After the war, you no longer knew whom to trust.

I grew up during the war, but it was only after it ended that I realized growing up does not stop when the bombs fall silent. That is when it truly begins.

I thought I understood people. I thought I understood love and life. In truth, I was still a child trying to carry the weight of a world that was never my size.

Peace looked different from what we had imagined.

It did not come with relief.

It came with responsibility.

We had to rebuild homes that no longer felt like homes. We had to learn how to live without sirens, while carrying traumas that never turned off. We had to relearn trust, rebuild relationships, and find meaning in a world forever changed.

Survival no longer meant hiding.

It meant enduring.

And sometimes, that was even harder.